The Illinois Student Senate held a debate on affirmative action in the Illini Union’s Pine Lounge Thursday. The debate, moderated by Student Senate Co-President Josh Rohrscheib, included a panel of two professors and two students. Each panelist took about 10 minutes to state his thoughts and recommendations about affirmative action and higher education.

The debate, originally set for last December, was organized so University students could learn what affirmative action policies entail and formulate educated opinions, said Zenobia Ravji, sophomore in LAS and the Cultural and Minority Affairs chair for the Illinois Student Senate.

The debate was moved to February because the committee was unable to schedule the professors, Ravji said.

The panelists, who were selected by the committee, did not state anti-or-pro affirmative action opinions. Instead they each provided national statistics and court cases.

James Anderson, professor and head of Educational Policy Studies, was asked to be a panelist by the Senate’s Cultural and Minority Affairs Committee and said he was initially reluctant to participate in the debate because of the controversy of this issue.

“I tried to avoid this like the plague,” Anderson said. “Never underestimate the power of student leaders.”

Anderson said there is a difference between people who are underrepresented and who have been historically discriminated against. He also said affirmative action is a policy that honors tokenism because the policy is used to increase low numbers of underrepresented students in education.

Anderson said with the increase in minority enrollment, one issue often ignored by affirmative action policies and supporters, is concern about white male students. Because of the changing development, where white males are being bypassed for admission, people should not think about skin color as the defining aspect to affirmative action, but should look at the demographics of all the students who were not admitted to universities, he said.

Professor in political science, James Nowlan, also said white males are becoming a growing, ignored demographic, especially in areas that have promoted affirmative action programs.

“There will probably be affirmative action in California for Caucasians in the years to come,” Nowlan said.

Student enrollment quotas were another topic discussed during the debate by Nowlan. He said at the level of higher education, quotas have become popular when it comes to affirmative action practices, which have assisted only middle class racial and ethnic minorities.

“Quotas have had a terrible effect,” Nowlan said. “Public policies have unintended consequences.”

The debate did not erupt into racist remarks, partially because the panelists did not take sides for or against affirmative action policies.

However, Billy Joe Mills, senior in LAS, an Illini Media Company employee and one of the panelists, did stimulate some headshakes with his alternative to affirmative action. Mills said in Southwestern states, primarily in Texas, the governments have implemented a policy known as affirmative access, which automatically admits the top 10 percent of every high school graduating class.

Mills said he likes the idea of affirmative access because it is based on economics and considers class instead of race and ethnicity, which can cause racial tensions.

“Diversity is a beautiful thing, but diversity with animosity is an ugly thing,” Mills said.